St Mary's Church, Batsford

St Mary's is the church of Batsford, the small estate village at the gates of Batsford Park, about 3km by road north-west of Moreton-in-Marsh. It was rebuilt in 1861 and 1862 in ashlar limestone in a neo-Norman style, the third church on a site used since the Middle Ages, and it holds the monuments of the Freeman and Mitford families who owned the estate. It is listed Grade II*.

History

A church has stood here since medieval times, and the Batsford Estate counts the present building as the third on the site. It was built in 1861 and 1862 at the expense of the Mitford family, then lords of Batsford, to designs by W. F. Poulton and Woodman, architects of Reading. They chose what Historic England calls a neo-Norman Gothic style: the round arches and zigzag ornament of the twelfth century, handled with Victorian confidence and topped by a spire of French Romanesque character.

The Freemans and the Mitfords

Two families, the Freemans and the Freeman-Mitfords, fill the walls with their monuments. Among the oldest monuments is an eighteenth-century tablet with cupids to Richard Freeman, Lord High Chancellor of Ireland. In 1886 the estate passed to Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, Bertie Mitford, a diplomat who had served in Japan and China. He rebuilt Batsford House, laid out the wild garden that became Batsford Arboretum and gave Moreton its market hall, Redesdale Hall. He was later made Lord Redesdale and was the grandfather of the Mitford sisters, whose own graves are at Swinbrook in Oxfordshire. After the First World War the family sold Batsford to Gilbert Wills, later the first Lord Dulverton.

Legend has it, the Batsford Estate says, that King George V used to come down from London by train on Sundays to services here, then lunch at Batsford Park. We have not found another source for the story.

What to see

Outside, look at the south-west tower: three stages with a polygonal stair turret, finished with an octagonal drum between four big pinnacles and a ribbed spire with gabled lights. Round the nave and chancel runs a corbel table, and the windows are round-headed under arches carved with chevron and other Norman-style ornament. The chancel ends in an apse.

Inside, the chancel arch has three orders, and the apse is roofed with a ribbed stone tunnel vault incised with zigzag. The fittings were carved to match the building: the pews, the arcaded enclosure of the family pew and the altar rail are all treated as if they were masonry. There is a circular limestone font on three marble columns at the west end and a stone pulpit with blind arcading. The chancel windows and the window beside the pulpit have glass by Kempe of 1888 to 1898, and three circular Arts and Crafts candelabra hang in the nave.

The monuments are the reason to linger. On the north wall of the nave is a nineteenth-century marble tablet to John Freeman-Mitford with an angel carved by Boehm, and an early nineteenth-century monument to Thomas Freeman with free-standing Ionic columns and an urn. On the south wall are eighteenth-century tablets to Elizabeth Revelry and to Richard Freeman, and in the floor is a marble coffin lid with a foliated cross on gold mosaic, possibly designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. A mid-eighteenth-century tablet to Sarah White is in the porch.

Visiting

St Mary's is a working church in a benefice of five around the Vale of Moreton, with services on the first and third Sundays of the month at 9.30am, using the 1662 communion service, and special services at Christmas, including an evening carol service, and at Easter. We have not found published weekday opening hours, so ask the Batsford Estate office (01608 650722) before making a special trip. Entry is free. There is no car park at the church.

Getting there

By car, the lane to Batsford leaves the A44 west of Moreton-in-Marsh. Batsford Arboretum's car park (GL56 9AT) is for its own visitors, and the arboretum says there is no access to or from Batsford village, so it is not a way to the church. On foot, the Blockley and Batsford Park walk makes a short out-and-back along the lane to the church, and the Moreton and Batsford walk suggests it as a detour from the crossroads by the deer park. Moreton-in-Marsh station is the nearest, about 2.5km away by road.

Nearby

Batsford Arboretum, with its café and garden centre, is the obvious companion. In Blockley, over the hill, are St Peter and St Paul, the Russell Spring and the Great Western Arms. In Moreton, Redesdale Hall and the Curfew Tower face each other across the High Street.